Originally posted by echo33029
What really held me back was the lack of being able to precisely generate automated orders at certain prices, i.e. only being able to say BUY at Close of Next Bar, etc. I haven't used EL in the last year but I have heard that they have provided an easier way to issue automated orders, can you please comment on how easy you find it to generate automated entry orders at a specific price, regardless of what timeframe your chart is set to. E.g. I would like to preset 20 possible entries to say something like: IF Bid >= 25.50 then Buy 1000 at 25.55, Limit, ISLD.
Echo
Unfortunately, though you can manually enter stop-limit orders, they still don't offer a fully integrated stop limit for EL, which would solve most of the problem, nor have they integrated routing options. Whether or not they can integrate such orders with EL, a more robust set of alternative order options (including trailing stops and the like, similar to those available in RealTick or CyberTrader, based on ACTUAL positions) would be desirable.
The closest practical EL-integrated alternatives you can currently get are, I believe,
1) stop market orders that trigger intrabar at a specific price
2) a limit order that's triggered by proximity or other conditions existing at/by the end of the previous bar, and that can be allowed to "hang around" (either as "ignored" in the account manager or as a dialogue box) until you're ready to execute it.
I'm not including the built-in pcnt-risk stops, because, in my experience, their performance in real-time tick-by-tick trading verges on the unpredictable.
Someone else might have some other tricks or ideas...
Also, you can't currently access bid/ask data directly through EL. I'm not sure whether that'll be so in the future. It'd be cool.
I suppose there MIGHT be some way to piggyback such features on TS6 with DLLs and so on, but that's above my software expertise and my knowledge of TS6.
I've also been given to understand that basket and parked orders, among many other improvements and enhancements, will be available in the next upgrade.
I think I'll forward this exchange to the TS WishList department, but it wouldn't hurt if you formulated your specific desires/requests and let them know that satisfying them might very well earn them your business.
TradeStationWishList@TradeStation.com